Eyes Like a Dead Puppy
by Jim in a Crown
Summary: Jim Moriarty/Sebastian Moran: an exploration of their relationship and characters. Not set in relation to "The Reichenbach Fall," so no spoilers or anything. Not fluff, not quite angst. But with Moriarty, is there even a distinction?
1. Chapter 1

As Sebastian Moran walks into the room again, he is reminded that he hasn't seen Jim all day. Not since last night. Although, of course, Sebastian has seen Jim millions of times before, his image of Jim can become such a strange, twisted god-like imagine in his head that Sebastian sometimes wonders at the reality of him. When Jim blushes, sneezes, does anything human, even breathe- it's a nice surprise, a nice reminder that James Moriarty is in fact human, and not an immaculate portrait of a man, frail as paper and as transient as thoughts.

All this crossed Sebastian Moran's mind as he entered the room to see Jim's back.

Jim is curled up in his swivel chair, legs crossed, and his hands under his chin. His face (if Sebastian could see it) would be as white as ice on a lake, and his head and his dark hair is lit with a pale blue artificial glow of the computer screens in front of him. Sebastian walks towards him, so Jim's face comes into view, his neck, his ear, his cheek. Jim's eyes look dead, blank. It's amazing how quickly they change.

Jim knows Sebastian is there but doesn't so much as twitch. He's concentrating.

Sebastian notes that Jim has no shoes on.

Jim's socks are odd, one pink striped, one blue. Sebastian still finds it strange for such a fastidious man to wear odd socks. Jim's suit jacket is slung over the back of his chair ("THE chair, Seb, if anything happens to this chair I swear to god I will fucking kill who-ever touched it.") He's wearing a pale cream shirt and his black suit trousers, a skinny black tie, (his tie pin is a tiny diamante skull) his little round collar is done up. His hair is slicked back. In fact he's perfectly dressed, immaculate, except his shoes (set neatly next to each other under the desk) and his jacket.

Sebastian sits down on the floor a few feet behind Jim, but so he can see him.

The room is long and narrow, the heavy oak desk at the far end against the wall supporting 6 computer screens, and a laptop. Two of the screens are off; the other four are on, glowing, waiting. The laptop is plugged into this system, and Jim looks like he was typing someone an email. From his concentration Sebastian guesses he isn't, but won't ask. There are no windows in here. It's pleasantly warm.

The carpet is soft and thick. Sebastian leans back against the wall, knees drawn up in front of him and opens his book. It's not a novel, but a scientific paper on forensics. He tries to keep up. He's never been able to fathom whether if he was somehow caught, Jim would kill him, forget him, or save him. It used to bother him. He doesn't let it anymore. As he should know, life is too short.

Sebastian opens it to the page he was on. It's very detailed, and he's starting to forget some of his basic chemistry. That's not good. He might have to revisit some old books. Sebastian, contrary to what many would believe, is not stupid. Next to Moriarty of course, he may as well be. Then again, that is hardly a fair comparison as the only people who can rival Jim's fantastic genius are possibly the Holmes brothers, The Government and The Police. 'How ironic' mused Sebastian, when he found out. He supposed that Jim rather liked that- competition, and being outnumbered. He does hate being bored.

Before he was dismissed from the army (Sebastian doesn't talk about why, except to Jim whose eyes get all gleeful) Sebastian went to a university of decent repute, and though he dropped out from his chemistry course half way through his second year and after drifting around joined the army, he is not _only_ a hit man. Mostly a hit man, true, but not only. Someone like Jim wouldn't tolerate his second to be all brawn and no brains. If Jim would ever consider him, really, as his true second. Sebastian knows if Jim ever fell, no-one would last without him. So then, what is the point in a second?

"What is it? You're distracting me by breathing."

Sebastian snaps his head up, "Sorry."

Jim taps a key twice with one finger outstretched, and then pushes his laptop screen half closed. He then pushes his swivel chair on wheels away from the desk and his laptop with both hands, using the table to propel himself to turn it (swivel) to face Sebastian, his legs still crossed.

His face is deadpan and blank, "I need a fluffy white cat to pet. It would make that SO much more dramatic." His voice is low and he lets his words drag.

"But you'd get cat hair on your suit." Sebastian rests his paper on his knees.

"That's why I have to rely on my own charisma sans cat." Jim smiles without his eyes, which rove round the room then rest on Sebastian. Jim looks tired. "What is it then? You're lurking suspiciously. If you were going to tell me that you didn't kill the girl, I know. You _have_ gotten soft recently. I should probably be nastier to you."

Sebastian can't help himself; he feels a slight blush rise on his cheeks. No-body else would notice, but this is Jim-

Jim giggles thrilled as his eyes light up, "Oh but that's the PROBLEM! You'd like that wouldn't you? I thought you would rather do the beating up, didn't know that's what floated your boat. Jealousy, Sebastian, jealousy. I didn't think you cared that much." Jim's voice had tilted mockingly, his Irish brogue stronger and his eyes suddenly bright. His fingers are curled around the arms of the chair. He knows very well Sebastian cares 'that much.' He knows Sebastian cares a lot.

Such a soft, gentle, feeling assassin. Jim giggles mentally.

Sebastian is redder now, enough that _anyone_ would notice. He looks down at his knees and can't meet Jim's gleeful eyes. He knew he should never have come in here, not after last night, not so soon without a good premise, without work to discuss, but as always he was drawn to Jim like a moth to a light. A pale blue, electric light. With a mocking Irish brogue.

Last night, Sebastian had received a text from Jim at midnight.

"Need you to take the rubbish out my dear. Now. –JM."

Jim had been to a concert that evening. Music was not really Sebastian's strong point. He read, and he listened to a little what would probably be classed as 'popular music,' but not with any enthusiasm. Jim had an eclectic taste, from The Scissor Sisters, to The Bee Gees, Beethoven, Bach, Rossini, Shostakovich and ABBA to name but a few. Last night had been a classical recital, Shostakovich's piano concerto or something. Sebastian had noted where and when, the performers, any audience of note, and had the building marked and guards watching, but he could recall what was being played.

The most notable event of the evening was that Jim had picked someone up at the concert.

A girl. Now Sebastian knew already (and how could you miss it?) that Jim's disregard for people as people, functioning thinking humans meant that coincidentally he didn't differentiate between men and women. It was all just a good time, or another toy to break, another mind to warp. He had, however, only 'picked up someone' twice since Seb had known him.

The first time had been a young chap, thin and tall and bony (now Sebastian came to think of it, maybe a little like Sherlock, though he hadn't known that at the time.) Jim had ("accidentally Seb, honest,") strangled him. Sebastian had to clear up and remove his body (still bound to the bed) and coverer up Jim's tracks. Sweep away the evidence, not that Jim had left much besides some suspicious bruises and other injuries. Handcuff marks are rather recognisable. It hadn't really disgusted Sebastian at the time. He suspected Jim was high anyway, and he made allusions about Jim's sense of humanity, besides, Jim probably would have asked Sebastian to kill him afterwards. It was a rather easy job, if at an unfriendly time of night.

So, the girl this time. Sebastian had been almost surprised when he turned up at the flat at quarter to one in the morning to pick up the pieces. Certainly she was certainly fully conscious, young and tired and sarcastic. Jim was nowhere to be seen, but as Sebastian parked outside his phone buzzed, "Dispose of her please darling. –JM" and there she was waiting outside his door on the landing.

Sebastian averted his eyes from the visible marks round her neck, and gestured down the stairs with his head. She picked up her bag and followed him as he walked, quickly. Sebastian had parked his new car outside the flat. God knows Jim pays him enough, and as Sebastian has nothing to spend it on (what is free time?) he often spends it on cars. Nice, expensive, shiny cars.

At this precise moment in time, he hadn't quite decided how he was going to kill her.

This was a case of maximum caution, to make it look accidental. Helpful, Sebastian sarcastically thought as she slid into the front seat as he held the door open for her, that Jim had covered her in bruises. Also, he had no idea who she was and where she was from, and therefore who would come looking for her.

Sebastian briefly looked to her as he sat down in the driver's seat and turned the engine on. She was young, maybe twenty. Mouse haired, pale, pretty with cold eyes and freckles.

"I saw he was rich but not that rich." The girl had closed the door, and was looking out of the window. Sebastian noted that she'd let her shoulder length hair down. Not that it hid much.

"You're not his chauffeur though. He lied didn't he? You're a bodyguard?"

"Why do you think that?" Sebastian turned his head to back the car out of the space. The engine rumbled gently, quietly.

"Is this your car? It's nice. Very new. You must be a bodyguard, or he wouldn't pay you that much. Plus it's a crazy time of night." She watched him as he turned out onto the main road.

She was irritating. She seemed quite bright, quite alert. Sebastian briefly wondered why.

"Where do you live?"

She didn't answer for a second as she curled up in her seat, sliding down so she could bring up her knees and hug them to her body like a child. She wrapped her arms around them protectively. Her navy dress was pulled back off her knees and the thin material of her tights made her legs shine in an inhuman way in the streetlights.

"Er, NW1, Camden Road- my university lodgings. I'm a student." She looked at Sebastian obviously waiting for some kind of conversation. None was forthcoming.

"Studying History."

He continued to drive.

"Did you go to university?" She drew back her head slightly and looked out of the window. Sebastian could tell she was regretting asking. She imagined that a 'body-guard' wouldn't have gone anywhere near a university.

"I studied chemistry."

"Oh cool. That's interesting. One of my friends is doing bio-chem."

He wondered that she wasn't more awkward considering what she had just been doing with his employer. He glanced across to her again and he could see her face reflected in the car window. Her eyes were dilated, but that could have been the dark. He looked back to the road.

How to kill her.

Sebastian took one hand off the wheel and reached into the right hand pocket of his suit jacket. He had a selection of syringes, one to knock someone out, one poison, two- no- three, and a hallucinogenic to befuddle the mind. He knew the ins and outs of each of them. The first poison, cardiac arrest. The second, seizure followed by brain haemorrhage-

"So are you his body-guard? What does he do?"

Sebastian sighed and brought his hand back to the wheel. "It's none of your business what he does. Or what I do."

"So, aren't his bodyguard. Or you'd just say you were. That's a normal, legal job."

Sebastian didn't twitch but his eyes narrowed. A normal, _legal _job. He hated intelligent people. Except Jim of course.

"Don't worry, I don't care. Jim already said-" she paused, "Well, I'm not going to say anything. I'm an impoverished history student, I've got nothing to do with your work except a liking of classical music which your employer shares." She smiled to herself a little. Sebastian could see the curve of her cheek in the corner of his eye.

"Yeah you _only_ shared a taste in classical music." He hadn't meant for that to sound as bitter or as bitchy as it did. He clenched his hands on the wheel.

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow, "What's wrong with you? Are you jealous?"

Sebastian didn't answer.

"So YOU my dear, dear killer are jealous of a little girl. That I found at a concert." Jim tilted his head to one side and smiled with his teeth. "So _sweet_ Sebastian! You're just like a big kitten really aren't you? Just with a big gun and a pocket full of explosives."

Sebastian felt small and overpowered under Jim's gaze. It didn't help that Jim was literally looking down on him from his position on his swivel chair, compared to Sebastian on the floor. Seb felt cornered. He turned his face away and awkwardly scrambled to his feet, the action of standing bringing him close past Moriarty in his chair, Seb's arm even brushing his shoulder.

Jim caught his sleeve and hissed up at him his eyes wide and dead, "I think it's really cute."

Sebastian jerked his arm away and walked towards the door. He didn't want to look behind him. He didn't know if Jim was watching him or had turned away. He didn't know which he wanted.

Sebastian was a man of great self control however, at least on this occasion. So he didn't turn. He let the door click shut behind him.

He thought he heard Jim giggle.

But he might have been imagining it.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> Sorry about the OC. Don't worry, she's not coming back she's only a literary device. I think OCs are a bit self congratulatory in fan-fiction. (Unless anyone wants to see more of her?) Also the brief comment on Jim being bi- I know the internet likes to take offensive but I simply mean that's just one of those things about Jim. Not that bi people are psychopaths. I'm not a psychopath!

I know I've left their relationship pretty ambiguous in this chapter, but I'll clear it up in the next one. I'm doing a bit of a trolling Gatiss/Moffat there aren't I? Ha ha ha! Oh fanfiction is so fun.

Hope you liked it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note**: Mentions of drugs/suicide in this, just to warn you. Just the kind of unhinged insanity you'd expect of Moriarty, so I hope you like it.

* * *

><p>It was the next evening, and Sebastian was on the roof of Jim's flat, smoking. He didn't live with Jim, or beneath Jim's penthouse apartment, but a 2 minute jog - or a one minute sprint- around the corner in a similarly large and airy flat. White walls and exposed brickwork. Very classy, and expensive. London hipster. The area was full of expensive pubs and restaurants and clubs and bars. None of which Sebastian frequented. Neither did Jim. Sebastian wondered why he'd chosen this area.<p>

It was January and it was 7pm, so as Sebastian smoked his breath combined with the cigarette amalgamated into spiralling plumes that he expelled into the night sky. It was a clear night, cloudless, but it was London so the sky never darkened beyond a dusty orange navy. Sebastian could see London's lights blinking all around him, as well as the orange tip of his cigarette.

He was wearing his warmest jacket, lined, and he had his favourite sniper rifle in a case slung over his shoulder. Its weight was balancing and comforting. That afternoon he'd been on a case for Jim, a particularly important one; hence Moriarty had sent Sebastian. Sebastian had been glad of it. The fonder (if that word could EVER be applied to Moriarty) he became of Sebastian, the more work was devolved from him. He'd ended up tailing Jim for the last two days as though he were just a _body-guard. _He knew Jim had a growing network of spies, assassins, interrogators, torturers and bodyguards beneath him, but Sebastian knew he was still the best. The others were sacked (and 'removed') as fast as water in a river. They were expendable, fluid, a mass of people that Jim used as tools. Sebastian was one of the few that stayed.

Jim and Sebastian at the top of a shifting multi-million pound crime network.

Sebastian smiled.

Just then Seb heard the door below in the flat slam, and a lilting voice singing waveringly crept up the stairs to the open rooftop where Sebastian stood. He could catch faint strains of 'Dancing Queen,' as Jim bounded up the stairs to follow the voice, and spun out onto the rooftop. Moriarty was wearing just his suit trousers and pointy black shoes, his dark red tie askew. His shirt's soft and matt white fabric gave his sallow skin the colour of old white paint. He was pale as death.

"Sebastiiaaaaaaaaan!" Jim leapt towards to Sebastian who turned to face him. Jim caught his arm in pale feverish fingers. Seb could see his eyes were wide and dilated. "Sebby Sebby Seb, I'm SO clever!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Hell yes. I've figured out how to fix the national lottery, do this ultra clever computer thing that you wouldn't get, kill someone I didn't like much from 5 miles away with NO evidence, and how to sink a cruise liner to kill a 19 year old, so make his father kill his mother who owes me 3 and a half million which she will leave in her will to that charity that I'll create that will fraud 21 million by hacking the-" Jim paused and licked his lips, eyes darting backwards, "No, that's 19 million." He looked up into Sebastian's face, "I was getting ahead of myself," his eyes lit up again and he gripped Sebastian's arm tightly, spinning him around, "But don't you see I'm just brilliant?"

"Yes Jim, you are." Sebastian began to prise the smaller man's fingers from his arm, mentally adding, 'and high as a kite.' The worst narcotic Sebastian indulged in was his cigarettes, but Jim's capacity for boredom was limitless, as was his self destructive nature. Sebastian wondered why tonight of all nights, when he'd seen Jim just half an hour ago to tell him how the assassination had gone. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he'd just wanted to work faster. Maybe he was just Jim.

Jim slapped Sebastian's fingers away and let go of his arm, then reached up and in a movement like a snake snatched the cigarette from Sebastian's lips.

"Hey!" Sebastian whirled round and tried to grab it back but Jim spun away so his back was to Sebastian.

Jim sniffed the still burning cigarette and turned back to Seb his nose wrinkled, "God these things _stink_. Smoking is so disgusting I should buy out all the cigarette companies."

"Please don't." Sebastian watched Jim flick ash left and right, seemingly mesmerising by the smouldering end of the cigarette with its orange glow. In the darkness the shadows made Jim look ill and tired. His eyes had shadows underneath them the same dusty blue as the sky. His arms were bare where he'd rolled up his shirt sleeves and he looked strangely underdressed and scruffy. Sebastian knew Jim should be freezing as it was below zero, but he doubted Jim could feel it. Another affect of cocaine on the body he noted, mentally.

Jim moved the orange light of the tip of the cigarette backwards and forwards for a few seconds longer, both men mesmerised by its glow. Below them, somewhere in the city a police siren wailed suddenly.

"I wonder if that was you," Sebastian joked, disquieted by Jim's silence.

Jim looked up his eyes wide and unblinking for a second before he smiled, "Probably was. Woops!"

Seb smiled at him. Jim's insanity was comforting. Like an orange shock blanket after an accident.

Sebastian reached out and gently pried the cigarette from Jim's frozen fingers, popping it back between his lips as he clasped Jim's hands in his own hissing through his lips, "Christ Jim you're frozen!"

Jim smiled inanely as Sebastian let go of Jim's hands to sling his rifle off his back and lay it gently down like it was a sleeping child, to remove his jacket.

Jim was still holding his hands in front of him where Sebastian had held them, and he remained obediently still as Sebastian slung his jacket around Jim's bony shoulders. It was of course too big for him. Jim lowered his hands slowly and turned his head to sniff the neck of the jacket. "Smells like you."

Sebastian shivered and took a drag of his cigarette, "Well it would."

Jim turned to face Sebastian who was now beside him, and in an uncharacteristic affectionate action leant into Sebastian, burying his face in his shoulder, so all Seb could see was his dark hair and his back covered in Seb's jacket. Sebastian wondered what would happen if his cigarette ash fell into Jim's slicked back hair. He twitched his lips imperceptibly, and his cigarette bobbed orange in the gloom. Seb automatically brought up his free hand -that Jim wasn't leaning on- to brush away any invisible ash on Jim's hair.

He had barely touched Jim's head when Jim brought his hand up in a startlingly quick motion and grabbed Sebastian's wrist, raising his face from Seb's shoulder to look at him. Their faces were too close. Jim let go of Seb's wrist and took his cigarette from between his lips in a smooth movement, his two fingers brushing Seb's lips as he did so. Seb wasn't sure if Jim let them linger there intentionally or not. His fingers were cold and smooth.

Jim was still leaning on Sebastian, and looked at the cigarette again turning his hand this was and that, before reaching up so that the burning tip was underneath Seb's chin and he could feel its heat. Jim's eyes were still wide, dark and dilated. They were like puppies eyes, Seb thought irrationally, but a dead puppy. He could feel the heat prickling his neck and smell the smoke. His heart beat faster.

Still holding the cigarette Jim let his nails scrape down Sebastian's neck till they reached his collar bone. Where he touched he left a trail of goose bumps. His fingers were icy and the cigarette was hot.

By now Jim had twisted round so he faced Sebastian more directly, still leaning on his right arm and now part of his chest and he looked up into his face, Jim's right hand at his neck. Sebastian could smell his hair, mixed with the smell of the cigarette and Jim's cologne.

Jim dropped the cigarette suddenly, so that it tumbled and rolled a little away, still smoking feebly. He rested his whole hand on Sebastian's neck and pressed down. It was uncomfortable but hardly choking. Jim tilted his head back to stare Sebastian wholly in the face. If Sebastian looked down their noses could touch. Their mouths, could touch.

"Five miles murder. I need 127 mirrors, 10cm by 20cm." Jim didn't move.

Sebastian's voice rasped a little, "What?"

"I SAID I could kill someone from 5 miles with no evidence. To do that I need 127 mirrors. 127 mirrors that could put you out of a job. If your target is driving anyway. Well, if this target is driving, Which she will be."

"Mirrors."

"God yes you idiot. You're so slow. I said mirrors, I meant mirrors."

Jim took his hand off Sebastian's neck and cupped his cheek. He pulled Seb's face down to his and whispering into his mouth, "You're so fucking stupid," before he kissed him.

Seb's heart beat faster, and how cold he was momentarily forgotten.

Seb brought up his hand to touch Jim's flushed face not interrupting the kiss- but not before Jim had pulled away and stepped backwards, wiping his mouth angrily with his sleeve. My sleeve, thought Sebastian dully.

"Ueergh you taste of cigarettes, that's _foul_."

Jim turned away and spat over the side of the building, hitching up Sebastian's jacket so it didn't slide of his skinny shoulders. "I'm not going near you until you brush your teeth." He smoothed his hair down with one hand leant back to look at Sebastian, his eyes just dark shadows in the gloom.

"I- er-"

Jim sneered and gently twisted his neck as though stretching. His voice was as always low, mellow and cold, and it gave Sebastian chills like no other living thing could.

"What are you waiting for? Now."

Sebastian (almost immediately) turned and picked up his rifle-case from where it lay forgotten, and then strode to the door. He looked back at Jim's silhouette twice before obediently disappearing down the warm stairwell, the heavy metal safety door clanging shut behind him.

The silhouette that was Jim leant forwards as though ill, then doubled up, squatting down with his arms wrapped round his body, hugging Sebastian's jacket to him, his hands white as white against the course black fabric. Balanced on his toes, he brought his head up slowly to look out across his city, his eyes dark as chocolate and blank as a dirty pool of water. The wind ruffled his slick hair every so slightly and Jim brought up a hand to smooth it back into place.

He licked his lips experimentally and wrinkled his nose. Mint toothpaste was by far preferable.

The city continued buzzing faintly, distantly. Ordinary people living ordinary lives.

How boring.

Jim stood up and let Sebastian's coat drop from his shoulders. The cold air whipped around him and he shivered in delight, his white skin and white shirt almost glowing in the dirty London night air, his legs and shoes and hair melting into the darkness. He walked to the edge of the tower block, and slowly lifted a foot to place it on the small wall round the edge of the building. The lip that told you where concrete stopped and air began. He looked down.

Down at tumbling air and tiny cars, little people and pointless thoughts.

Jim looked up, to the faint stars, obscured by the musky light pollution.

He hopped the other foot up, both feet on the wall. Jim stretched his arms upwards, the world falling away at his feet but a few centimetres further forwards. He tilted his head side to side, stretched his neck like a cat and then brought his arms down so they drew straight lines away each side of his body, like he was a dancer, like he was being crucified, like he was about to take a bow.

The wind buffeted him again, and his lithe body swayed gently. Jim Moriarty lowered his arms and closed his eyes to smell the air. A savoury sweet London smell of dirt.

His eyes snapped open in the knowledge he was just a little too close to the edge. Whenever he was happy, he went a little too close to the edge. And Sebastian wasn't there to stop him.

Straight ahead of him the buildings sat squat, silhouetted. The air was suddenly colder.

Jim held his eyes wide open till they watered in the sharp January air.

Then, carefully, Jim stepped down backwards onto the roof again, swaying gently like he was drunk, his face solemn and his eyes again hooded and petulant. As though Sebastian had made him come back down. Scolded him, chided him, loved him till he did.

Jim tilted his head as he considered this.

No.

Mint-toothpaste time though.

Jim sauntered towards the stairs, gliding down easily to snatch up Seb's jacket from the floor without breaking his stride. He tossed it over his arm.

Sebastian time.

Not the time to fly. Not yet.


	3. Chapter 3

"I have," Sebastian recalls Jim telling him once, alone in a car, late at night, "only killed two people. Ever. Physically that is, you know- was actually _there_ to do it myself." Jim nodded as he spoke and his mouth was sullen, his eyes dull. Sebastian remembers how he asked Jim who they were. Jim looked at him incredulously from under hooded eyes. "My parents, obviously," he breathed his voice deep and velvety. Sebastian thinks that was the moment he truly began to love James Moriarty.

Neither of them knows, but they would be happy to die at each others hands.

Jim would smile into eternal sleep, his vision clouding with a comforting red if it were Sebastian's hands at his throat. It would quite a sexy way to die, he thinks.

Sebastian would feel safe and calm if he could see Jim's eyes as he pulled the trigger. Bottomless polls in which Sebastian would drown with a hollow click; a twitch of a pale spider's finger. Such a perfect way to die, he thinks.

The pettiness of life gets in their way all too often. "Money, my dear Sebastian, is such a draaaag, but it does get people to come and play, which stops me chocking to death on my own boredom."

Sebastian is the calmness to Jim's emptiness. Sebastian is not calm in the way someone spiritual might be, nor is it for any sense of fulfilment with his life. He's not calm as he has all his worries under control. He has none. Sebastian doesn't fear pain, he doesn't fear death. Life otherwise is incidental, pleasant at points, unpleasant at others. Sebastian's calm is like a swimming pool. An empty, dry, swimming pool. The ladder descends into Nothing, and Nothing can't be rippled by a breeze.

Jim's emptiness is not unhappiness. It might be boredom. It might be something deeper than that. Not even a game with a master chess champion would amuse Jim for more than an hour or two. Crime is just like chess, except it's you vs. the world. The more people on the other side the better: they're all so stupid. Money, suits, blood, toys- nothing can fill the gaps in Jim's soul. But Sebastian slots in nicely, taking up no room at all. It makes all that space slightly warmer though, like the feeling of someone's last breath on your skin. Pleasant.

If you were to dive into Sebastian's soul you'd crack your head open on the bottom of it. If you were to dive into Jim's you'd never ever hit the bottom, just keep falling.

"You do what I tell you, don't you Sebastian?"

Seb didn't answer, but looked unblinkingly at Jim.

Jim sighed; the man was so taciturn he wondered why never hit him. Oh, okay, Jim did: why he didn't hit him _more often_.

They were in Jim's flat, in the living room. It was spacious, of course with white walls and expensive art. The room was rectangular, a sofa opposite a flat screen TV built into the wall above the fire place on the long walls, and further along at the end of the room (by a wide window with a panoramic view) sat a high backed arm chair that Jim liked to curl up in, next to a tall bookshelf and a music centre. The door was in the middle of the long wall, splitting the end with the window and the chair off from the sofa and seldom touched television. The floor was a light warm wood. An expensive rug. Sebastian was sat, perched in fact, on the edge of the sofa. To sit in Jim's chair would have been a death sentence.

Jim stood a few feet away from Seb. He'd just come in off the roof and he pale with cold, though his eyes were bright.

"You did brush your teeth didn't you?"

Sebastian inclined his head. "I did." He looked down, "Because you told me to." He glanced up at Jim, who had thrust his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels as he looked at Seb from under his eyebrows. "And now, because you're you, you're going to mess with my head for ages."

"Oh course my dear," Jim looked nonplussed, "what else is there t'do?" He tilted his head, looking at Seb, bored.

Sebastian looked up at him.

The flat was silent.

Jim slowly rotated his tongue round his teeth, otherwise unmoving.

Sebastian stood up suddenly.

Jim rolled his head around, stretching his neck and smiled at him from under his eyebrows, looking up into the taller man's face.

"Jesus Jim you're such a flirt."

Jim sniggered and rolled his eyes, "Of course. Problem?"

"No." Sebastian cupped Jim's face in his hands, tilting it up to his own and kissed him.

Jim kissed back, his hand on Seb's shoulder, kissing him deeply, and pulling on Sebastian's lower lip with his teeth, his eyes closed. Then all of a sudden Jim pulled back and Seb let go of his face.

Jim shook his head, hissing through his teeth and pulling a face. "Better, but boring."

"Boring?" Sebastian stared into Jim's black eyes.

Jim raised an eyebrow, "Urm, yes, boring. Try harder Sebbie."

"Fucking hell Jim." Seb leaned in to kiss him again but Jim side stepped him and spun around, walking away. Sebastian could see his shoulder blades through his white shirt.

Jim's voice sing-songed over to Sebastian, who had sat down on the arm of the sofa. He watched Jim and ran a hand though his fair hair, slowly, calmly.

Jim stopped at his book case and drew his eyes lazily over the books in it. "The problem is Sebastian, you're a killer." He turned to look at Seb who looked at a loss. Jim sighed in a theatrical fashion. "I pay you to kill people. I also think that killing people is sexy." His eyes were dark and deep as he stared at Sebastian. "But you're too _nice_." Jim made a face on the word nice and shrugged his shoulders, sidling back to Sebastian.

"Nice is not sexy. Nice is boring. Nice is…" He looked around as if the word would be written on the walls, "_Nice."_

Jim stepped back to Sebastian, close enough that their legs touched, Seb sitting, Jim standing. Jim dragged a finger up under Seb's chin and Seb obediently tilted his head up to stare Jim in the eyes. Jim bit his lip and looked at Seb as though he were a puzzle. "Why are you so _nice_ to me?"

Sebastian didn't answer. He thought, 'because you're so self destructive and have so many enemies, I'm the only thing in this universe that _can_ be nice to you.' But he didn't say it. Sebastian rarely said anything that didn't need saying.

Jim looked down and grabbed Seb's hands (Seb's heart stuttered at the sudden unexpected contact and he chided himself) bringing them up to his face. Jim held them as though he were the handcuffs, holding Seb's wrists together. Jim leant into them and kissed Seb's knuckles, one by one, slowly, methodically, before letting go, and taking Seb's right hand with his left and making him hold it out flat, as though Jim were about to high five him.

"Look. You have big hands. Big hands that kill stuff. You could strangle me with that hand. You could concuss me, beat me, burn me, hurt me."

Seb just sat there, his hand in the air, "I thought you said it was cute that I didn't kill that girl."

Jim wrinkled his nose, "No, that was cute then, but you know me Sebastian, it's not cute now. I'm so changeable. Sorry love."

Seb let his hand fall, and placed it on his knee, looking away from Jim. He was suddenly very tired. "Jim I'm-not now. Please."

There was a moment of cold silence.

"Not now what?" Jim snapped, his face suddenly a bitter sneer, "YOU'RE THE ONE MESSING ME AROUND! Not now for mind games, not now for asking you to fuck me, not now for jumping off the roof, not now for living, NOT NOW FOR FUCKING _WHAT_?" As he shouted his face was twisted with anger, and as he turned away he was breathing heavily.

Sebastian didn't flinch through the tirade, and now watched Jim as he walked into the centre of the rug on the floor, and crouched down, curling his arms around himself protectively, rocking slightly on his heels. Coming down of a high was never the best time to be with Jim. But someone had to be. Sebastian thought somewhere at the back of his mind that he ought to sleep on Jim's sofa tonight.

"Not the sofa." The back of Jim's head was all Seb could see and Jim's voice was small and vulnerable. "Sleep on the end of my bed like a dog, but not on the sofa. It's like you're some relative visiting for a weekend. Sofas are for sex or television. Only." Jim's shoulders hunched and then straightened out again. "I'd pass a law if I cared for laws."

Sebastian didn't ask why Jim figured out he'd stay. It was one of those unspoken silent assumptions they had that Jim could read Sebastian like a book. When Jim didn't it was more surprising.

Seb sighed a little as he imagined going over to Jim. He wanted to wrap his arms around his bony shoulders and breathe his smell, but he knew Jim would lash out at him. "Shall we just watch TV for a bit?"

"I've got a thousand and three frickin' things to do, and I've got about 4 people you could be out there murdering for me, and you want to watch TV?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Jim stood up, swaying slightly, and turned to Sebastian. He began to roll down his shirt sleeves from his elbows, trying to iron out the creases in them with his hands, smoothing them methodically and leaning into himself do up his cuff buttons, fumblingly. He gave up on the second one and walked over the Sebastian holding his arm out.

"Do it up for me Seb."

Sebastian gingerly did as he was told, looking up at Jim when he was done. Jim nodded sadly and looked around before sliding past Sebastian on his sofa arm and flopping down on the cushions, easing off his shoes and bringing his feet up so that his knees were bent in front of him and he could wrap his arms around them. His trousers were lifted to show his skinny ankles and dark red socks, matching his narrow tie. Jim patted the seat next to him as he turned the television on with a controller he'd found out of nowhere.

Seb stood up off the arm of the sofa and came and sat down next to Jim, leaning back into the soft cushions and stretching out his long legs in front of him, crossing his ankles. Jim leant into his shoulder as he flicked channels, then stopping on a repeat of 'Frozen Planet.' A polar bear lumbered onto the screen. White on a white background. Jim dropped the controller and brought his left hand across his body to rest on Seb's knee, and watched the screen silently.

Seb didn't pay attention to the screen but stared at Jim's pale hand that rested on the black cloth of his trousers. The weight of Jim's head on his left shoulder was comforting, as was his warm body. The hand was mildly disconcerting, but no matter. Seb slowly closed his eyes.

Jim opened his, and with a shift of his head that would feel to Seb as though he was just adjusting his position tilted his face to look up at Seb's expression. It was serene. Jim wondered whether it looked the same as he killed someone. It probably did. He'd watch next time to take note.

Jim closed his eyes and curled up contentedly into Sebastian, who presently wrapped (sleepily) a protective arm around him.

The TV cast blue flickering lights into the room.

The polar bear walked on though the snow.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> I've read other Jim/Seb that has David Attenborough documentaries- sorry if that's stealing an idea. I don't know who started it. I just like it. Also, I don't know if I ought to turn this into a smutty fic. It's half way there, but it's the half I'm missing that counts. Any thoughts dearest readers? Anon comments are allowed if you like to keep your name clear and free of incriminating evidence. Hope you liked it. More being written as you read this.


	4. Chapter 4

Sebastian Moran had been a disappointment to his father in several ways.

Firstly, there was the violence. Sir Augustus Moran was a violent man himself and he hit Sebastian with comfortable regularity of habit, the only variation being with what- an umbrella, his stick, a book, a bottle. He never hit anywhere that would leave marks visible to a stranger. He called it a lesson. The young Sebastian took it as such. It was a practise in absorbing pain, learning patience, and controlling your reactions. Yet somehow Sebastian's blank eyed expression infuriated his Father further.

Violence was also a problem when it was Sebastian who was the perpetrator. At first he wasn't as wise as his father and the other children couldn't be silenced (they didn't have as good self control as Sebastian himself.) Changing schools and covering up the fact your son is sadistic bully was tedious and irritating. Sebastian's father didn't want his child's reputation to taint his name and position.

Secondly, Sebastian disappointed his father in the diagnosis the child psychiatrist presented, though by then he was nearly thirteen. In the nicest terms possible she had explained to a mute Sebastian and his Father that Sebastian exhibited symptoms of what might at best class him as a sociopath, and at worst, a psychopath. Sir Moran had fired her immediately, beaten Sebastian with his briefcase, and they'd never spoken of it since. His father stopped trying to change Sebastian, only encouraged restraint on his part, and (metaphorically?) swept up Sebastian's bloody footprints behind him with tired efficiency of a street cleaner. Sebastian was ushered in and out of the best schools.

Academically bright, though not brilliant, but distant and unresponsive, a teacher once wrote on his report, "Rarely pleasant. I have suspicions he bullies and manipulates the other students, though it is difficult to find proof." By then Sebastian had learnt his Father's subtlety, how to get what he wanted, and cover his back. The teacher was fired.

Lastly, Sebastian disappointed Sir Augustus Moran by sleeping with men. He himself never cared about it or dwelt on the fact. Sebastian preferred men's bodies to women's. Just like he preferred killing his childhood pets to caring for them. His father was stoically old fashioned and took it as a person slight on himself when he found out. (Bringing someone home was little stupid, but then they'd both been drunk out of their minds and Seb thought his Father was out.) By this point Sebastian was taller than him, well built, lean and strong. As the walking stick swung towards him he caught it, and deftly broke it in two. Sebastian's father never hit him again.

In a lonely month after Sebastian had been expelled (for what was to be the last time) from school, he learnt to use a shotgun on one of his Father's estates. He was already familiar with knives. However, the simple peace of trees, bullets and blood was not to last, and before long Sebastian found himself first at Eton, then studying Chemistry at Oxford, surrounded by ambitious young people, other rich kids like himself, and plenty of distractions. For once Sebastian left before he ought to have, not because he made a mistake or was forced to, but because he was bored with the rigid, structured days, with the other students, the lecturers. Distractions that weren't distracting.

The only time in his life that Sebastian pleased his father was when he joined the army. Even admission to Oxford had disappointed him; any son of his should have studied PPE or Classics. He didn't understand (though by now he should have) that Sebastian's apathy towards those subjects stemmed from a deep and calm disregard for people, let alone society and culture. Maybe he shouldn't have fired the psychiatrist.

The army was a good experience for Sebastian. Adrenaline suited him, he was calm and collected, intelligent and ruthless. Learning to obey orders, too, was no bad thing. He respected the men above him because they had killed people. Sebastian rose quickly through the ranks on his skill and his father's name. Before long he was Colonel Moran. His father was relieved. Shortly after Sebastian's promotion he died. Of relief, Sebastian wondered?

Sir Moran never saw Sebastian dismissed from the army, his name in ruins. Through his father's old contacts and a bit of blackmail, the affair was hushed up, but it was a few months of brain melting security work and late night bars before Jim Moriarty found him and his life finally found a purpose. Seb never looked back. He never looked forwards either: Jim was his whole, his present, and his now. In a line of business such as Jim's, the future may be closer to the present than is comfortable to observe, anyway.

-o-

The room Jim was sitting in was white walled, smooth and perfect, like the rest of his flat. The piano was a Steinway grand, a deep matt black, the name embossed in gold above the pearly white keys. It was the only thing in the room except a golden standing lamp, the piano stool, and Jim himself who sat still, fingers resting on the keys. He suddenly played a flurry of notes, a little of a Sibelius piano sonata, bashing the notes out firmly, his pale fingers dancing. Then he stopped. Stood up.

"Dull." The word should have echoed around the room, but the walls absorbed it. Jim closed the lid of the piano gently, carefully, brushing imaginary dust off its smooth surface. He was wearing black again. Too much black these days. Jim let his fingers trace his jaw as he stood and thought in the bright light of the white room with the black piano. He'd wear navy, he thought, when Seb came back. Till then, black. After all, he had a murder to attend today, and that is the closest that he got to funerals.

Sebastian was away, up in Glasgow.

It was a reasonably important trip, so of course it was either Jim or Sebastian, and Sebastian was better at killing people. He didn't get over excited, or mess up the crime scene by dipping his fingers in the blood. Also, as Jim had told Sebastian, "I'm not going all the way there only to kill two people and get one piece of paper. It's grey up there. And soggy. I don't like rain, today anyway. I liked rain yesterday but not today, so basically Seb, you're going." So Seb went.

Jim thought it might do them good to get away from each other. Jim wasn't very good with people. He accidentally broke them. He didn't want to break Sebastian. Not yet.

Not at all?

Not at all worried Jim. Not all implied feeling. It implied attachments.

Jim wandered away from the piano to the window where he rested his forehead on the cold glass. "Shoot me now Mr. Sniperman." There was of course no-one there, but there could have been. There always could be. Seb had worked out any good sniper positions though. To be honest so had Jim. But you could never know.

He wondered if he ought to kill Sebastian Moran before- well, before. Jim knew he could quite happily pull a trigger and see the light in Sebastian's eyes fade, blood splattering his white walls- no, that wasn't the problem. The problem would be when Jim needed someone quiet and as amoral as he was to rant at, to flirt with, to watch TV with, to trust to go and kill two people and get a piece of paper. It wasn't the death. It was the after.

Who else was there? They all died. The Shostakovich girl died. Jim had her killed by someone else, because Sebastian didn't. That was fun. That body guard a week ago died. He was ugly. That client died, who was too stupid to bother with, and too rich to patronise. Jim bought himself a new suit as a present. It was such a pretty death, it deserved a pretty suit. His last secretary was at the bottom of the Thames. The new one started tomorrow. They all died, they all left, and everything moved and shifted except Jim and Sebastian.

Jim only ever spoke to about four people in his… 'company.' The rest fanned out in a pyramid beneath him. They did little things, paperwork, covering things up, scamming people, hacking stuff, faking things. Nothing that needed such a steady hand and a cold heart. Oh they need cold hearts all right, but not as much as Jim or Seb. Jim was untouchable, at the top, maybe a voice on the phone if they were lucky, sometimes just a name. If they were expendable, or Sebastian, they knew his name.

Or Sebastian.

Oh well.

Jim removed his forehead from the glass. Time to go and kill someone. Fun fun fun.

Seb would be back later today. 'Or Sebastian' would return to him, as cold and distant as ever, as flustered when Jim flirted with him as ever, as warm and living as ever. As smelling of metal and cotton as ever. Jim considered this and smiled.

Then he strode out the room, a swing in his step, on his way to kill someone.

-o-

It was lunchtime, sunny still, crisp air and blue skies. Jim and his bodyguard were loitering on a quiet street in central London, all grey pavements and chewing gum, and expensive hotels and flats leering over them. The air was clear but still smelt of dirt.

The man leaning on the brick wall was decidedly not Sebastian. He came from Kerala in Southern India, Jim thought. Perfect English though. A very good killer. But no psychopath, so not to be trusted. He was thicker set, stronger looking, with broad shoulders and thick dark hair, long dark feminine eyelashes and perfect skin. He was quite beautiful. Jim had a little weakness for aesthetics, and the guy was good at killing stuff, but he was a bit of eye candy too- to liven up a dull day.

It was clear he thought Jim insane though, and not in a sexy way. Straight as a plank, this one. Jim moved his eyes off him and looked down at his phone.

He had to tilt his head up to look under his sunglasses to see the dark screen in the bright light. Jim's hair was immaculate, neatly darkly slicked back. He hadn't changed from that morning, except to add his favourite black coat-jacket over his white round collar shirt and narrow black and gold tie. He held another phone in his right hand, but focused on the one he held out in front of him in his left, which showed a black and white video link of a short plump man in a hotel room. The man was sitting on his bed packing his suitcase.

Jim tilted his head to consider the scene. Just as the man closed his suitcase, Jim pressed a button on the phone in his right hand. The plump grey man jumped on the little screen. Jim smiled. He put the small cheap phone in his right hand to his ear and waited expectantly as it rang, once, twice, thrice, then clicked onto answer phone.

The pretty bodyguard watched Jim with the interest of someone who's paid a lot of money to watch with interest.

"Helllloooo gorgeous!" Jim crooned into the phone, his eyes fixed on the little man on the screen. "I've foooound you my lovely and you know what's coming now. If you want to talk to me just ring back on this number or… you have 10 seconds. You can count, starting- NOW!" Jim took the phone away from his ear and hung up. He nearly giggled as he watched the man dive for the hotel phone and frantically dial. Jim glanced at the bodyguard. No reaction- nothing. Urgh how dull. This was so funny!

The cheap phone went off, beeping some violation of a decent piece of music. Jim waited till the man on his smart phone screen in his left hand was twitching with nervousness, small, grainy, and black and white, before he answered. "Hullo?"

"Please, Sir, Moriarty- I'm not going to do anything wrong- I haven't done anything- I'm still totally faithful- I'm not- I'm-"

"Shut up fat-face. Why are you running away then? You know me, that's why!"

"Please- I-"

Jim rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "You're a tremendous person, and I'm only doing what's in our best interests!"

"You-re doing- what- you're-" the hope in his voice was pathetic.

"Yes, you're right, I'm killing you. You did some part time work for that other idiot- yes, I noticed- and he's about to collapse. His whole puny empire- poof! Uniforms will jump in. So, you need to go too. Bye bye!"

"No please- please- I won't-"

Jim sighed theatrically. "Shut UP! I was trying to give you a proper farewell. It was nice working with you, you smelly little rodent. BYE!"

Jim hung up, then raised his phone in the air. After a seconds silence, a single shot rang out. Jim looked back down at the other phone's video link. The grainy little figure wasn't moving. The blood stain was quite pretty, even in black and white and only a handful of pixels across.

Jim turned to Ambak, who frankly looked bored. "Go and clear up the camera and any evidence. You know the brief. You have four minutes before police arrive." To his credit Ambak ran then, round to the front of the hotel. They had been standing just under the man's window. Jim didn't need to be, but there's nothing like hearing a shot in real life, and besides, this guy really needed to die. He'd worked for Jim for two years. A lifetime. Had to make sure he was dead as a door-nail. He'd known it was coming. Even the coolest cucumbers panic at the end.

Jim took one last look at the video link, where he saw Ambak enter the room calmly, using the key card Jim had given him, and neatly, avoiding the body, step towards the camera in the ceiling, gloves on. Not Sebastian, but technically okay. Jim closed the program and pocketed the two phones, walking slowly back down the street to his waiting car.

Swaggering, really.

-o-

When Sebastian returned, it was half past ten at night. Sebastian let himself in, half expecting not to see Jim, but simply to leave the envelope on the table. Jim was usually found working late at night, locked in front of a computer, skin lit with blue lights. Instead, Seb was greeting with faint strains of music from Jim's sitting room. Sebastian left the piece of paper in the envelope on the hall table and opened the door.

"Sebby!" Jim's smile was huge and infectious as he bounded over to Sebastian and grabbed his arms, looking him up and down.

Seb blinked, "I got the-"

Jim cut across him, "I know. The paper is on the hall table, and both assassinations went well, except you had to wait for the second one a little longer than expected- only because his train was delayed, now you know- so you haven't eaten dinner, just," Jim sniffed, "smoked like a chimney, but otherwise it went very well indeed, like clockwork. It didn't even rain." He looked up at Sebastian, like a child looking for praise.

"That's about the long and short of it."

"I know." Jim smiled manically and let go of Seb's arms, skipping to the music centre where he paused the piece of music. Sebastian hadn't really listened to it, but it had been something orchestral. "I ordered you a pizza, it's in the oven, and after you've eaten it I want to teach you how to dance."

"How to-" Seb's lip curled into half a smile, "I can't dance, and thanks for the pizza."

"Well you're not going to get it unless you dance with me."

"Is that a metaphor?"

"Only if you want it to be."

Sebastian laughed, a rare sound, and Jim tilted his head on one side and smiled, "Go on then."

While Jim grabbed a book from his shelf and curled up in the high backed armchair looking small and pale, Sebastian left the room and crossed to the kitchen, where he found the pizza in the oven, and got himself a glass of wine.

"D'you want a drink, Jim?"

There was a pause before Jim's reply came faintly across the corridor. "No, and don't you dare touch that bottle of red with the green label or I'll peel off your eyelids."

Sebastian looked down at the bottle. A red label. Thank God.

Back in the living room with the pizza eaten (and Jim stealing Seb's wine glass every minute or two to sip from it) Seb relaxed back into the sofa as Jim sat perched on the arm, his feet on the seat, watching him. "Don't fall asleep you lump, dancing remember?"

"I've been out for days in grotty hotels in Glasgow. I'm tired."

Jim laughed with derision, "How _appalling_. I think I'm spoiling you, you- Colonel Moran of that ridiculous story about a tiger and drain hole or something. Get up and dance now or I'll do something unpleasant."

"What." Seb didn't open his eyes but let Jim take his wine glass from his hand. When nothing else happened he repeated, "What?"

Seb opened an eye to see Jim's arm as he lent towards Seb, and felt Jim's hand by his neck, the scratch of a needle, faintly, not properly, over one his arteries. He was suddenly very, very awake.

Jim's eyes were wide and staring. "You don't know what's in this, and maybe neither do I. Anyhow, the neck isn't a good place for drugs, so I wouldn't risk it. Straight to your brain."

Seb concentrated on moving his neck as little as possible as he spoke. "I'll dance."

Jim immediately withdrew his hand and pocketed the syringe, popping a cap over the needle. He then hopped off the sofa arm and took off his jacket, draping it where he'd been sitting and straightened his tie, holding out his arms.

"Then come and dance."

Sebastian obediently stood up, as Jim spun away to the music centre rummaged through his records.

Seb watched him curiously. "What sort of dancing? If it's some of your eighties pop I swear-"

"Well you'd have to dance anyway if it was, but consider yourself lucky that it isn't." Jim carefully placed a record on the turntable and put the arm down. The sound of music filled the room.

"What is it?"

"You wouldn't know, anyway, but it's Shostakovich. Jazz Suite no. two."

Jim spun into the middle of the carpet, hands out like a ballerina. He offered a hand to Sebastian. "You went to posh kid's school; you should be able to waltz. I went to a shit-hole in Ireland and I can."

That was a rare insight into Jim's previous life, and Sebastian despite his curiosity didn't push it. He took Jim's hand and let him lead him into the centre of the room. "You can tell I never cared much for that kind of thing."

"But you have such a pretty body you'd have made such a good ballroom dancer!" Jim poked Sebastian's hard as rock stomach. "Not that that pizza will help."

"Oh shut up." Seb's eyes smiled.

Jim took Seb's hands and placed one on his hip, and held the other up. He out his other hand on Seb's shoulder, and proceeded to teach Sebastian how to waltz while the music danced on theatrically in the background:

_"I'm being the woman- shut up or I'll knee you somewhere painful. You hear the beat of the three? God don't tell me you're that tone deaf- yes- there- now you move your feet to it. Stop moving! I didn't tell you how! I'll put the Bee Gees on and make you dance till four in the morning if you don't pay attention. On the 'one' you step like this- look at my feet- my feet Seb goddammit- oh god you're going to tread on my toes you clot go and take your shoes off."_

A quarter of an hour later Jim had lost patience.

Sebastian rubbed a hand over his eyes, standing on the carpet in his socks. He'd taken off his jacket and was just wearing his shirt, braces and dark trousers. Jim paced round the edges of the room like a caged animal, randomly hitting things with a pillow. It was a very tame tantrum by Jim's standards.

"I tried Jim, we were sort of dancing-"

"Shut UP."

Jim whacked a wall with the cushion, and let it fall, turning back to Sebastian. He held up his hands, closing his eyes in exasperation. "Just stand there, shut up, look pretty, and don't try and dance."

Seb blinked in resigned agreement as the record (which had been put on over and over again) clicked to a finish. Jim paced over the player and chucked in a CD. It was some kind of pop record, sounded old; soppy and lyrical. Seb didn't know it.

Jim walked back over to Seb and placed his hands on his shoulders, looking up into his face. Jim looked tired, as always. Seb liked it though. The shadows under his eyes made him more human, more fragile. Seb put his hands on Jim's waist as though they were slow dancing.

Jim smilingly yawned at Sebastian, all teeth. "I've got a family of five I need you to kill tomorrow. I'll come with you. I want to see something interesting."

"Kill, how?"

"Oh god I've missed you; _how_ not _why_. Such a beautiful simple mind." Jim sighed, "You can have artistic licence on this one. It's not worth making it seem anything but intentional, and I need to send a message with it, hm?" Jim tilted up his face to Sebastian's a little more, and blinked like a cat in the sun, "Mostly though I want you to try and impress me. Do something pretty Seb. Lots of blood. Pretty please."

Seb slowly smiled. "Okay."

Jim took a hand off Seb's shoulder and distractedly, slowly, traced Seb's lips with a few cold fingers.

Then suddenly Jim was kissing Seb hard, and Seb was kissing back, teeth and lips and- but just for a few seconds, as Jim let go of Seb abruptly and began to move away, turning away his face and stepping out of Seb's hold.

Seb caught his arm, and tried to pull Jim back.

Jim spun around and slapped him hard across the cheek. Seb blinked in surprise, letting go of Jim's arm.

Both men just stared at each other.

"Why, _why_ do you keep doing that?"

Jim sneered and his voice hit that low octave that moved something in Seb's stomach, "Do _what_?"

"You get- you- kiss me, then just stop and act as though you didn't. What the fuck do you want?"

"You." Jim swallowed and tilted his head a little, like a lizard. Seb felt like neither of them was breathing. He certainly wasn't.

"I want you Seb, but not now." Jim frowned distractedly as though something invisible had occurred to him and was pestering him. "Not now."

Seb breathed out through his nose and flexed his fingers. "Okay. Fine, okay."

Jim considered Seb for a few seconds. "Impressive self restraint. Obedient as always." He raised his dark eyebrows, "Aren't you my dear?"

Seb was about to reply but Jim picked up his jacket and threw it at him. "Out. Get out of my flat. See you at twelve tomorrow. I'll pick you up."

Seb paused for just a fraction of a second.

"Get the fuck OUT!"

Under Jim's crazed glare, Seb retreated, sliding on his jacket and brushing past Jim to go out of the door into the hall, where he slid on his shoes without doing them up, and left, closing the front door just a little less quietly than normal.

Jim's face relaxed into a smile. "Good boy, good boy."

The CD played on, crooning softly.

"One day I'll annoy you enough."

Jim stared thoughtfully at the empty pizza carton for a few long seconds, then left the room.

Lots of pretty things in store for tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note:** I've even managed to disgust myself in this chapter. Properly nasty gory images here. Be warned. Oh, and smut. I know, I know, I outdo myself.

* * *

><p>For Sebastian who'd grown up with beauty all round him, he found the poorer parts of London fascinating. The regimented but shambolic huddles of flats with their dead eyed windows and flaky pre-fab faces had an odd beauty to them. They were the kind of buildings that looked drab even on the most dazzling sunny day with a crisp blue sky.<p>

For Jim, who had never told Sebastian where he came from (but Seb had his suspicions) they were, "utterly _vile_." Jim now spent his days in search of primarily amusement, but also beauty; whether it was the cut of his suit or the silk of his tie, the Persian rugs in his flat, the art on his walls, or, that pretty star shaped blood stain that you only got a few times out of twenty.

Sebastian also appreciated those.

As they drove on through Rotherhithe in the wide car with the tinted windows and soft seats, Jim said it must be Seb's military obsession that made him like ugly buildings- that it was nostalgia. Seb replied (unusually thoughtfully and forwardly) that maybe they were both just trying to forget their pasts. Jim turned and_ looked_ at him. Sebastian couldn't hold his gaze, so turned away to look out of the window. Jim didn't speak again until they reached their destination. When Seb glanced across at him once, his eyes were closed and he had earphones in, despite the fact that the car had excellent stereos.

Sebastian really should never ever try to be clever Jim thought. He saw the shadows flick past through his closed eyelids, all was orange. He thought back, lazily, to the last few days without Sebastian as he turned up his music. ABBA. Cheery. Cheesy.

Not this time, but normally, when Seb was away Jim went out. Clubs, concerts- it depended on his mood. The clubs were easy ways to find people; they were uncurious about him- drunk or drugged but still adequate for a quick fuck around the back. Plus, he never had to kill them, which though a shame, made things simpler.

Jim remembered telling Sebastian just months after they'd met that he'd only ever killed two people. Of course that was a lie, though Jim did _usually_ keep his hands clean. Lying was just what Jim did. (Besides, on that occasion he'd loved Sebastian's adoring look. His cold eyed appreciation was just so _pretty_.)

Going out had the attraction of lying as well as sex. Jim could be anyone in a club. Irish, English, German, American- dressed in tight dark jeans and a T-shirt, a flashing bright smile and an ability to charm anything that moved.

Jim confined most of his outings to times when Seb was away. He knew Seb's devotion to him. He would never use that word out loud, but that was what it was. Neither men truly understood love or fondness, but whatever they had Jim had decided that he liked it. It suited him- it c_omplimented_ him as well as the cut of his favourite suit did. Jim didn't want to loose it casually, loose something he didn't even have yet. Though there were occasions when a prodding jealously did Sebastian some good. Jim knew how to play people.

Let him think I'm all his. Then remind him I'm not. Then give him a chance. Then put him back in his place.

Having said that, the only reason Sebastian stayed was that he _wasn't_ other people, everybody else, who were as easily moulded and ripped apart as playdough. Sebastian was himself, a calm, killing, dead eyed man that soothed Jim's crazed emptiness. Jim also enjoyed him when he couldn't control him. A beautiful relationship built on firm foundations of mistrust.

Sebastian watched the world flick by outside the car and let his mind wander. He didn't know how Jim wanted him to kill those people. It felt like a test. Paint me a masterpiece in blood or I'll blow your brains out. Seb could see himself as a ghost like reflection in the car window, all pale and shadows and scruffy hair. Pale as Jim this window made him. Jim. What did Jim want? I want you Seb. Seb blinked away last night. It was not helpful. Jim's flirting; his deranged beautiful frustrating flirting only hindered right now, and did not help. At all.

Sebastian closed his eyes.

Was it worse than normal? The kissing was up a step. But hell- Jim had flirted with him since they'd first met. What was the first thing he said? Hello gorgeous? Sebastian had thought Jim was trying to pick him up. Maybe he wasn't far wrong. What was changing now, and why?

Whatever he thought, whatever it was, however annoying Jim was- Sebastian had had a lonely time in Glasgow on his own.

-o-

The car eventually drew up outside a large quiet house on a residential street. (Seb quickly took it in: Detached. Edwardian? If so brick, better sound insulator. No side windows. Blinds. Empty street.) Jim got out of the car and slammed the door. Seb followed him, walking to the pavement as the car slid away. Jim turned to Seb. He was wearing his navy Westwood.

"Two parents, the woman, 52, her husband, 51. Three kids; boy 19, girl 18, youngest 14. Artistic licence remember."

Seb nodded. It felt like an exam, but one Seb cared about. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder. "Fine, just-" Seb paused, "don't get in the way."

"I won't." Jim's eyes were wide and innocent.

Seb walked ahead. Jim rang the doorbell.

The youngest boy answered.

-o-

The family's dining room was quite pleasant, a square, spacious room, not as nice as Jim's flat with its classy cleanliness, but pleasant nonetheless.

Though… most people might have preferred it without the blood stains.

They went in height order, one at about six foot, the next one a foot or so below, and so forth to the fifth and final one, at about the height a boy's head would be if he was sitting on the carpeted floor.

A large and beautiful mirror with a polished gold frame had hung there before, on the wall by the door. It had been moved, and now sat against the opposite wall where you could see it if you walked in. And you could see what was reflected in it. Sebastian had turned it so that reflected all five marks, turned it up so that the long landscape mirror stood portrait. Jim had described it in those words as it was like art.

Art sends messages too doesn't it?

The actual bodies sat slumped at the far end of the room, against the dresser, shambolic and leaning, bloody, and very very dead. Seb had drawn the blinds in case someone walked past.

Under the window at the front of the room was a heavy, old oak dining table. It was watched by five pairs of glassy eyes.

Jim lay on it. Eyes closed. Hands folded over his stomach like the figure on a tomb.

As normal Jim couldn't help himself; he'd interfered. Artistic licence didn't so much as happen. It was directed. Sebastian had nothing to worry about.

As Sebastian had bound and gagged the family in the front room, Jim laid down on the dining room table, closed his eyes, and preceded to give Sebastian 'suggestions' every minute or two.

"The guy first. Not the far wall. The wall by the door."

"No… do it in height order isn't that obvious?"

"Let it run, that doesn't matter."

"Shut up the kid his chirping is irritating, I'm trying to solve a maths problem."

How Jim knew what was happening with eyes closed was anybody's guess.

All done now. As Seb stood back surveying the scene, Jim sat up and swung his legs off the table, swinging his feet. He yawned and looked around. "Nice." The sun came through the blinds in a fractured way, beams of light here and there. It was cool but bright inside.

Scratching his chin Jim looked at the pattern of blood stains. Some of them looked like dandelion clocks where the blood had run. Or percentage error bars.

He slid off the table and pulled a marker pen from his pocket, walking to the lowest mark on the wall, and next to it- just off the floor as though he adding the final point to this bloody scatter chart- drew a large 'X' in pen. Jim labelled it, 'you,' and drew a smiley face. He liked smiley faces.

Sebastian watched with his hands in his pockets. "A warning for who?"

"That lady's brother. I shipped him weapons, all the way to Afghanistan and he didn't pay me." Jim sniffed and stood up. "Plain rude."

"Was a bit."

"Very." Jim turned and looked Sebastian up and down. "You're surprisingly un-bloody. That's rather disappointing."

Seb rubbed at a dried patch of blood on his right hand, "I'd say that was your fault."

"How so?"

"You've long impressed on me the need to be neat."

Jim poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue. His voice was low. "Mmm. Maybe." He looked around the room, and then turned on his heels to look at the bloody wall again. "It's not that neat. This. You didn't do it right."

"I didn't- how?" Seb was surprised.

"You didn't listen properly. It's not a straight line. You'd fail your maths GCSE with that."

"I did what you said."

"No, you didn't."

"I did, I tried."

"Well you should try harder. Seeing as we can't bring them back to life to try again I'd say that was failure."

"Like hell it was!"

Jim turned round and sidled up to Seb, dipping his head and licking his lips. His eyes looked particularly dead and deep today. He slowly looked up into Seb's face. "You're a fucking, _failure,_ Moran." His voice wasn't joking.

Sebastian should have known Jim was trying to rile him. He always tried to rile him. It could have been amusing. But there was something about today. Jim's flirting, the sun, the residential polished street with its middle-class houses and _blinds_. This stupid ridiculous scene. The bodies of an innocent family piled up against a dresser and messages written in blood. The army had been so simple, so messy. Sebastian missed the mess, the blood, the sand and the dirt. Jim knew that. Seb hated the house, the lazy modest affluence. He hated the fuss, the neatness.

Jim knew how to paint the perfect picture to aggravate Sebastian.

"You're _boring _me_."_ Jim began to move away.

Sebastian grabbed Jim's coat collar in a blur, pushing him backwards across the carpets till he slammed him against door to the room, next to the bloody wall.

Jim's mouth opened in a smiling surprise, blinking as his head knocked back against the wood. He had to try again to speak, "Oh- oh Sebby you darling thing!"

Sebastian pushed Jim's head back with his forearm, pushing it against his neck so Jim chocked a little, head tilted back. Seb leant his weight into Jim so he couldn't move, he was on his tiptoes. Jim's eyes rolled but a smile still played at the corners of his mouth as he struggled for air. His hands clawed at Seb's jacket, by his hips.

"F-f,finally." Jim gasped the word that caused Seb to push harder, and Jim closed his eyes still gulping for air. Seb watched him frozen for a second, but then removed his arm, pinning Jim instead by his shoulders. Jim's head fell as Seb took his arm away and he coughed in air, before resting his forehead against Seb's, such was their proximity.

Neither moved for a few long few seconds.

"I like it when you're angry." Jim's whisper rasped just a little.

There was a pause.

"Be angry again my darling Moran."

Seb stood up straight and dropped Jim so he fell back to the flats of his feet, stumbling slightly against the wall.

Seb himself stood back, and as Jim brought his head up Seb slapped him, hard, across the cheek.

"For yesterday."

Jim touched his cheek in surprise and blinked. "Nice." He looked up from under his eyebrows at Sebastian, swaying slightly. "But I can tell you're about to be boring again."

Seb reached for Jim's arm, to hit him, hold him or kill him, he wasn't sure, but Jim stepped away, leaping across the room to the dead bodies and crouching down beside one, a teenager, pushing the body over-

"Jim-"

Jim's back was to Seb, and Seb couldn't see what he was doing. After a few seconds Jim stood up slowly and turned and walked back to Seb, holding his gaze.

Jim stopped in front of Sebastian and reaching up, slowly dragged wet fingers down his cheek, rather tenderly. Seb reached out, his fingers over Jim's own on his face, and when he brought them away to look at them they were red with blood. Blood for him.

Jim had stuck his fingers in the smashed up skull of a dead body, just to paint some blood on Sebastian's face. It's the most fucked up thing he'd ever heard of, but somehow the sexiest.

Jim took his hand off Seb's face and held his hands up to look at them as thought they weren't his. His fingertips on both hands were wet with dark blood. He then moved his eyes up to Seb's face. Eyes like a puppy. A dead puppy Seb thought, quite rationally.

Of course Jim kissed him. It's what this whole dance had led up to.

Sebastian dragged him close in case he'd move away, but Jim wouldn't. Their mouths mashed together, messily, teeth and tongues and heat. Jim's bloody fingers crept into Sebastian's blond hair leaving lines of pink as he dug his nails into Sebastian's scalp. Seb's hands dug into Jim's jacket, pulling their bodies together.

Sebastian doesn't know where this will end. Where it ought to end, or where it will. Is there a difference?

"My Moran…" breaths Jim into Seb's mouth. Seb replies by jarring their mouths together again. Red is such a wonderful colour: love, lust, blood, he thinks.

Jim is clawing at this throat, his shirt collar, his clothes. Sebastian fends his hands off; he wants to rip the clothes of Jim and not the other way round. Jim yanks at Seb's hair and they're almost fighting, pushing and pulling and biting- Jim is like a cat. Somehow Seb's shirt is off first, Jim's jacket is on the floor, Jim is biting his neck, his hands creeping down Seb's muscled bare chest-

Seb pushes Jim back against the wall as he proceeds to remove his clothes, unbuttoning his shirt as Jim finally complies and removes his own tie, his hands then curling in Seb's hair as he leans his head down and begins to undo Jim's belt-

"Oh my little tiger…"

Jim pulls Seb's face back up by his hair, and steers their mouths together again for a violent kiss, then breathes into Seb's face, almost fluttering his dark eyelashes, "Who's going to fuck whom tiger? This could get interesting."

Seb has to breathe in to calm himself enough to reply. He cups Jim's cheek in his hand, his perfect pale face and tired empty eyes. Their faces are so close he barely needs to talk, "I don't, care, but, fuck knows you deserve it."

"Ohhh, I love it when you talk dirty m'dear." Jim's voice is such a low intoxicating drawl it's hard to make out, but in the end it doesn't matter if what either of them says makes sense. Seb kisses Jim again, then trails kisses and bites down his neck, onto his chest, pushing off his shirt-

Jim's hands are everywhere, cold, his nails scratching, digging into Sebastian's warm body, at his waistband then, deftly, quickly, off with his belt and undoing his flies-

As they fight the clothes off each other the dead bodies watch them with disinterest and glassy eyes. It's lucky the blinds are drawn in the room for more than one reason now.

Jim seems fragile, porcelain pale with collar bones and angles. He looks younger naked. With glazed eyes the trails fingers down Sebastian's stomach making him flinch, "You're so pretty." His voice is a velvet murmur, interrupted by a kiss on sore lips, and a rough bundling to the floor. The carpet is soft.

Sebastian is hard. His hands, his body. A man made of steel.

Jim wants to giggle as he looks up into Seb's firm face, trailing his fingers (dried blood under the nails) over Seb's slight stubble on his jaw. His Moran.

Sebastian turns his head and catches Jim's fingers in his mouth and sucks them; they taste like copper pennies.

Even the dead decide to look away after that.

It's a detached house, and not a terrace: that's good too. Sebastian discovers how Jim's screams are a perfect sound.

The five dead bodies watch two men with dead souls.

The sun through the blinds is broken.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's note:**

As someone pointed out- sorry about the change of tense in that last chapter. I knew I did it, I left it knowingly- but I shouldn't. Bad practise. I do like to hop around with tenses though, sorry. Bad, bad, writer. Glad you liked it though: the reviews made me all happy, thank you!

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><p>When Jim wakes up, it is with a pleasant feeling.<p>

He screws up his eyes and breaths slowly. Contentment? It is unfamiliar, odd. Jim feels rested, comfortable, relaxed. Is it happiness? He wrinkles his nose and opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. His ceiling. His flat. By the amount of light he guesses it is half past seven. Rather late for him to be getting up. He closes them again.

Jim curls his toes and is rewarded with a shooting ache in his legs. Ah. Of course. It is a pleasant pain, a nice reminding sort of hurt.

Sebastian…

"Am I as simple as that?" The ceiling doesn't respond to his sleepy Irish drawl. Who'd think a simple Sebastian could create such contentment in the criminal mastermind of the century. Amusing, in fact. Hilarious. Yet, for all he lacks empathy, of course Jim still understands pleasure. In a world where nothing matters but yourself, all you look for is something to amuse, pleasure, entertain you.

Jim opens his eyes again and yawns, then pushes himself upright in his double bed, slowly tilting his neck to test for stiffness, his shoulders, his arms. Dammit he's sore. He'll just have to punish Sebastian later. Jim's lips curl into a smile as he reaches for his phone by his bed and shimmies upright so he's leaning against the headboard.

_Morning tiger. Be here in half an hour. –JM_

Jim slides his legs out of bed as he waits for Seb's reply, and rubs his shoulder absent mindedly.

_Okay. Do I need anything? –SM_

_A big scary gun, and no that's not a metaphor. –JM_

_Okay. A meeting? –SM_

_You're catching on. Wear a suit.–JM_

Jim puts his phone down on the wooden table and pads across the room to shower. Business must go on; time for play later. Meetings always seem to go better for Jim when Sebastian stands behind him, all broad shoulders and cradling a gun. Odd isn't it?

Jim turns the shower on hot, and makes sure that he cleans the dried blood out from under his neat finger nails.

0o0

It's a grey day, but bright and the sky is almost white through the square paned Georgian window of the London house, now offices like so many beautiful buildings. Jim Moriarty and Sebastian Moran are waiting in the wide tiled upstairs corridor. Jim is leaning on the wall in a black suit, a matt pale gold tie, looking slender and dangerous and beautiful. His hair is immaculate and his eyes are at their deepest brown as he taps away on his phone, slouching against the white patterned wallpaper.

Sebastian is in a grey suit, black tie, and white shirt, feeling tall and awkward, but with that air of official importance a suit can give a man who doesn't normally spend his days in one. He still has a gun over his shoulder though, in full working order, polished black metal, but mostly for show. Just like Jim asked.

They are waiting for a client- behind the heavy closed wooden door- who might just be panicking slightly. Jim doesn't bother to try and eavesdrop; he knows exactly what the man will say. What he is saying. What he's thinking. Jim texts nimbly, pale thumbs dancing across the screen of his phone.

Sebastian's mind is on other things: Jim's polished façade, when all he can remember is him flushed and screaming, hair dishevelled. Sebastian concentrates on a pigeon on a nearby roof through the old glass of the window. Keep your mind on the job in hand Sebastian. He chastises himself for acting like a teenager again, is this an infatuation? With your boss? With an insane, unhinged, psychopathic criminal mastermind? Another though snags at his mind that is far more pressing: was that just a one off?

Neither Sebastian nor Jim are particularly subtle men, so Sebastian turns round without undue hesitation and perches on the window ledge, opposite Jim.

"Jim?"

"Hm?" He doesn't look up from his phone.

"Was-"

"Shut up, thinking." Jim's eyes don't lift from the screen.

Sebastian shuts up.

There's a thump in the room at the end of the corridor as a chair is moved. Thrown? Neither of them flinch, and neither really acknowledge it.

The door then opens; a man peers out, slightly harassed, very formal. "Sorry Mr. Moriarty, my client will be with you in just a few minutes, I apologise for the delay."

Jim had stands up from the wall and he pockets his phone turning to the man, his eyes wide and face amiable. "No problem, tell him to take his time." As always he stretches the words out, voice pleasant and low.

The man nods and shuts the door again.

Jim purses his lips then slowly rotates his head back to Sebastian who stands up and adjusts the gun over his shoulder, in case they're about to go in.

"What was it you were going to say then?" Jim's eyes and voice are blank.

"Nothing, really."

Jim considers him a moment, his head tilted. On the way here they spoke of nothing but work; Jim had given him the file of another target to read over later and outlined some important points.

"This is about yesterday." It's not a question but a slow drawled statement.

Sebastian swallows, looks away, and looks back again. "I was wondering what the- our, situation is now."

Jim steps towards him in the bright corridor. It's an almost swagger and reaches up with a pale elegant hand which he wraps around Sebastian's tie loosely. From their heights and the way Jim' head tilts, Seb can see his eyes dark under his eyebrows. Jim doesn't look at him.

His voice drops a few notes to a low song, "You're my favourite assassin, I'm your _employer, _and everything is just as it was except that now we're fucking." He tightens his fingers on Seb's tie, bunching it up, and looks up at him through his eyebrows, "Alles gut?"

Sebastian doesn't speak German but understands perfectly fine. "Perfect."

"Don't get too soppy, I like you nasty." Jim suddenly pulls him down with his tie, so Jim is stretching up and their faces are close and his lips brush Sebastian's. Jim's other hand is on Seb's chest so he can feel his heart rate quicken slightly.

Before either of them can move, they both hear the tread of feet on boards and the creak before the door opens.

Jim is immediately away from Sebastian, straightening his jacket all smiles and charm. Jim bounces down the corridor to shake the other man's hand, all long teeth and wide eyed friendliness, leaving Sebastian a few paces behind him.

Seb takes the fake greetings as moment in which to smooth out his tie, and adjust his gun for the millionth time.

Then he follows Jim in and closes the door behind them.

He knows his place.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** Apologies for any typos, I keep spotting them too late. Thank you for all the positive feedback!

* * *

><p>Jim is lying spread-eagled across his bed, all pale nakedness and white skin over white crisp sheets. His eyes are closed in sleep, but Sebastian can see the movement of his eyeballs through the thin skin. His eyelashes long and dark flutter with the movement sometimes, twitch against his cheek. He has fine lines around his eyes, crinkles in the corners as though he were one of those people who are serially happy, like they can't turn their smiles off and can't swallow their laughter. Jim does smile a lot, but Sebastian wonders where the laughter lines come from round his eyes, as it's rarely a smile that reaches them.<p>

Seb is sitting at the end of the bed, against the bedpost, half clothed, reading. The words don't really sink in though; he's read the same paragraph about six times now. His eyes just flicker back to Jim lying flat on his flat in front of him, to his room, to this absurdly homely situation, as though they were like a normal couple who lounged about in each other's presence after sex.

Jim's body is frail, rather slim and slight and very pale, even his face and hands. His dark hair, and the red bite marks Sebastian has left add any colour. His chest rises and falls slowly, shallowly. Sebastian has never seen Jim sleep before. It's almost uncomfortably intimate, far more intimate than the sex. That said, Sebastian doesn't go but stays and waits for Jim to wake up.

Seb treats the whole thing with the wary suspicion of animal that's been kicked too many times. Peace never lasts like this, it will be shattered, hurt and broken. One of them will hurt the break the other irreparably, or before that happens the outside hostile world will pick one of them off, kill them in a graceless crunch of bone and drop them in the Thames. Or, simply, Jim will say one day that he's had enough of Sebastian, and Sebastian will cease to exist, not even with that graceless crunch, just with a pathetic whisper, a quick convulsion in a corner. When Jim really, really cares, the deaths are inglorious, pitiful, and neat.

Sebastian can't really believe that Jim needs him, or this is anything like _love_. It's simply convenience.

Jim's tongue parts his lips and he breaths out, his chest moving, signalling the point at which at which he begins to resurface into the waking world. Seb sees his throat move as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. Jim then turns his head a little towards Seb, opens his eyes slightly, cautiously. They're hazel in the light of the room.

Jim's eyes rove over Sebastian and then he closes them again, arches his shoulders back and rolls over, and Seb can feel the movement through the mattress. Jim lies on his front. He raises his head and rubs his eyes with the back of a hand. "Have you just been sitting there, staring at me?"

Seb closes his book.

Jim moves his hand away from his eyes and flops his head down so it rests on his arms, folded in front of him, his head turned so he faces Sebastian. "I know you have this weird kink for seeing me in vulnerable positions, but watching me snooze? Seriously, Sebastian, that's just a bit sad. Surely you had better things to be doing."

Seb can't help but smile slightly, one side of his mouth tugging into a reluctant grin. Jim blinks back a smile with his eyes. Ah, there are those laughter lines.

Sebastian puts down his book, and slides off the edge of the bed, watched by Jim, and proceeds to gather his clothes up, padding round the room. Seb is wearing just his shirt, open, and boxers. His other clothes are scattered round the bed, except his tie which is on Jim's pillow, having left red marks cutting into Jim's pale wrists where Seb bound them together. As Seb sees it he smirks at the image it recalls. Jim's eyes are closed again.

Jim's voice is muffled by his arm, and is low in a lazy way, "Did you know there's a word in German that means 'to hit with furniture?' I find that so amusing."

Seb leans past Jim's legs that protrude off the edge of the bed as he lies the wrong way across it, and picks up his tie, adding it to the other clothes over his arm. Seb proceeds to get dressed again- after all it's the middle of the afternoon.

"That's, odd."

Jim slowly, like a cat, stretches and sits up, rubbing a wrist absent mindedly. He looks round the room with those tired hazel eyes. "I know. Now, be a good boy and fuck off now would you Sebbie m'dear? I've got work to do." His voice switches to monotone and grumpy mid sentence, and he runs a hand through his hair impatiently, more awake now.

Sebastian recognises that particular tone and hastily does up his trousers, leaving his jacket and tie off, gathering them up in his arms to leave. He heads to the door of the bedroom.

"See you this evening, or?"

Jim wrinkles up his nose and shrugs widely, irritated, "I don't give a fuck at the moment, just go."

Seb nods at him and doesn't reply, just exits swiftly, fumblingly shutting the door behind him with a click.

Jim stares at the blank walls and makes a face, pouting in displeasure at the empty room as he hears Seb put on his shoes in the corridor outside, then leaves by the front door.

When he's gone Jim yawns, then slips off the bed, blinking for a few moments to wake up fully before padding to the wardrobe to pick out underwear and a shirt, and, a suit? It's too late in the day for a suit, and he's meeting no clients. He could wear the one Seb ripped off him earlier, but it's creased now, and he doesn't feel like it. The colour of the day has changed since this morning, it's not a navy day any more.

After a few moments consideration Jim picks out a pale blue shirt and a pair of black trousers that don't belong to a suit.

Once dressed Jim feels scruffy, strangely casual and like a very old Jim that he's buried very, very well, for a long time. Except for his little 'acting' stints, of course.

Now, to work.

Lots to plan?

The shadows are growing longer in the room, and Jim is suddenly seized by the intense frustration that haunts him, especially on afternoons wasted sleeping, or long pleasant mornings. It's a frustration that's insatiable; it's not boredom or physical discomfort but a boiling bubbling anger fuelled by some underlying pointlessness.

Jim dips his head and brings his hands up to face, curling into them, rubbing at his cheeks, breathing out juddering and slow just standing, standing in the middle of his carpet. It's moments like this when he turns to various narcotics, just to bring a change, a sensation, to lessen the dead numb relationship he has with the rest of the world. Seb would be displeased, but he won't be here, and right now Jim doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

He lets go of his face and tilts his head around to his neck clicks. Jim stretches his arms out either side of him and clenches then releases his fists. It'll be a long evening and night, he can tell.

Stretching onto his tiptoes, Jim bounces into a walk which has the gait of someone with a purpose.

He leaves the room oddly messy, his old clothes still on the floor.

-0o0-

Seb jerks into wakefulness as his phone goes off, the dull vibrations amplified by the wood of his bedside table in the dark quiet of his room. Clumsy with sleep, he gropes for it and tries to focus on the screen in the dark. 3:24am. He finds the button to answer and collapses back into his pillow, the phone to his ear. "Jim?"

Jim's voice is quiet and high, and Seb has to press the phone closer to his ear, "Sebbie… Seb, Seb, Sebbie-" There's a hissing crackle at the other end that Seb can't place.

"Jim? What are you doing?"

"Seeeeeeb. There's a- there's a thing, things, and- Sebbb,"

Seb scrambles to a sitting position, something inside him clicking awake as he recognises the crackle as _wind._

"Jim, where are you?" Speak clearly and calmly.

Jim's breath hisses shakily down the phone, "There's a lady- with a clarinet, a clarinet Seb and she won't stop, she won't- she won't stop playing and it hurts- my- head, it hurts and it's out- out,"

"Jim, listen to me. Where- are- you?" Sebastian swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and with the phone sandwiched to his ear with his shoulder stumbles to his feet and starts to dress, grabbing anything at hand.

"It's, out- out of tune Seeeeeb and there are eyes… There are eyes and- eyes, Seb help me, Seeeeeeeb."

Seb hisses into his mobile in frustration, mostly to himself, "Fucking hell, what have you taken?"

"I, Seb- I,"

"No, sorry, where- no, what can you see Jim? Tell me what you can see."

"Eyes, Seb… help, they're- they've- eyes and-"

"No, Jim except for the eyes. What building are you in? What's around you?" Sebastian is dressed now, pulling on shoes, grabbing a revolver (heck, Jim's probably his own biggest enemy, but you never know) and leaving his room, jogging to the front door.

"There's, sky, and eyes, in the sky too- I never noticed that- I don't- SEB!" Jim's breath quickens and he moans, "There's a thing, Seb, a thing, and they have faces Seb and a clarinet- it won't- can't- shut up Seb…"

Sebastian sighs, partly in worry, partly in frustration, he's not sure if _he_ knows. "Jim, I'll be there in three minutes. Stay still, the- _things-_ can't hurt you. There in three." He hangs up. Seb is out of his flat and running down the stairs.

A few seconds later he flings himself out into the night. It is as dark as London ever can get at night, even with an all pervading February gloom. It's been raining since four o'clock, which was of benefit to Sebastian as everyone knows forensic evidence isn't helped by rain. He did a few small tasks for Jim, ones assigned a few days since, as he hadn't heard from Jim all afternoon since he left his flat- now he knows why. A bedraggled fox shoots into a hedge as Seb runs past.

Sebastian hopes Jim is at his usual flat. He has no reason not to be, but then again Jim doesn't follow reason. Jim owns a handful of properties across London and elsewhere. And just a few of them are flats where he'd have access to the roof. Which is, logically, where he must be. God knows why.

It is three minutes and thirty-four seconds later that Sebastian gets onto the roof. Two minutes to run, the rest for the lift.

As he opens the door he's hit by a cold wind, and just a little rain. It's easing off, but the rooftop is shining with it, and the sky is all the darker for the cloud cover. Sebastian spins round and tries to make out anything person shaped on the roof and when he can't, is hit by a moment of panic, an unfamiliar emotion that takes him by surprise. What if he got the wrong roof?

"Jim?"

There's something- there, in a corner between a ventilator and part of a wall, blending into the assemblage of odd shapes that stick up from the otherwise flat roof top. It moves slightly.

"Jim!" Sebastian is over by him in a second. Jim is curled into the corner, his hands over his face, crouched down, rocking slightly, light blue shirt wet with rain over his shoulders and back. Sebastian gently lays a hand on his back and tries to pry his hands off his face. He's freezing. "Jim? Talk to me-"

"Geddoff- Seb, things," His mumble is now incoherent and he weakly swats Seb away, taking his hands off his face. In the dark Seb can't tell, but he doesn't think his eyes are focusing on anything. On top of whatever he's on, Seb can smell alcohol.

After a quick moment of indecision, Seb quickly decides words are wasted on Jim in this state, so simply hauls him to his feet his hands under Jim's arms. Jim sways and nearly falls, tipping into Sebastian, groaning briefly and screwing up his eyes and Seb half drag him out onto open roof, towards the stairs.

Jim claws weakly at Seb's arm so he stops, "Feel, sick." Seb just has time to aim Jim away from himself before he convulses, throwing up in a painful series of spasms, shaking in Seb's hold. Seb doesn't let go and holds him tight until he finishes. Jim is shaking even more now, so Seb makes sure he's done, wipes his mouth with a tissue he throws down to disintegrate in the rain, then picks him Jim up like he's a child, so his head lolls against Seb's chest. Seb carefully carries him down the stairs and back into the flat.

Inside his bedroom, Seb undresses Jim down to his boxers and lies him down in his bed. Jim's eyes are clearer now, and though he doesn't speak they focus on Seb, at least some of the time. Seb is in half a mind to call an ambulance, but that has the issue of all the fake papers, and he knows if it's not necessary that Jim would kill him once he recovered.

Seb decides to stay by him, keep checking him, until, well, _until._

Seb climbs onto the other side of the bed, fully dressed and sits back against the pillows. Jim blinks slowly as Seb switches off the side lamp, lying still as anything- except his eyes- as he slowly warms back to life. Seb can hear his own breathing in the sudden dark silence. Jim would never thank him for this, he knows is. The sod.

Seb reaches over and pulls the bed covers over Jim's immobile body, Jim's mouth almost seems to twitch into a drugged smile but Seb can't be sure. Seb sighs.

"You idiot you know? I know you said I liked seeing you in helpless positions, but this was not the kind of thing I was after."

"Selfisssh." Jim's words are a bit slurred; Seb hadn't expected an answer though. Jim tries again, "Don't be so, selfssh. I didn't do this co'z 'f you."

Seb smiles into the dark. He doesn't reply. At least Jim seems a little more 'with it.'

"I think there'sss face ontop 'f the wardrobe Seeeb."

Or maybe not.

Seb checks Jim's pulse, despite Jim's pathetic attempts to move his wrist away, and it seems stable and close enough to what thinks is normal. He lets him go and slides down the bed so he's lying down, clothed, on top of the bedclothes and waits until Jim stops talking nonsense, and then closes his eyes while Jim's breaths grow slower, and deeper, and he slips into a restless sleep.

That's twice in one day he's seen Jim sleep.

Although, actually, it's tomorrow already.

Seb himself dozes off somewhere around four am.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the longer pause between chapters, and this is short. I've been over-stressed with work. Sad face.

* * *

><p>Jim had gone abroad. Sebastian didn't know where, because Jim didn't want him to follow.<p>

After the incident Jim had woken Sebastian by slamming an alarm clock into his face (only a slightly bruised eye resulted) and generally been foul and angry for the rest of the morning. Sebastian could guess how much Jim's head would have been hurting, though he took no pain killers and just curled up in his living room with a mug of green tea, wrapped in a blanket and spitting nasty things at Sebastian while texting constantly. Sebastian left an hour after they got up, and he hadn't seen Jim since.

In an hour with Jim you can gather rather a lot, though, and Sebastian had gleaned that Jim's anger was something to do with the fact Sebastian had either saved him, or seen him in that state. Considering the fact that Jim possibly owed him his life, or at least his health (pneumonia can be awful, Seb thought) and that Jim was the one who had rung Sebastian… Well Seb had already met Jim's hypocrisy before, so it shouldn't have surprised him. Maybe then it was seeing the incoherent babbling helpless Jim. Again, though, Jim's fault. Sebastian didn't understand Jim's relationship with drugs at all. Why pollute the greatest mind of the century with those stupid chemicals? Sebastian viewed them as an equalizer, not something that set Jim apart. It seemed a stupid, human thing to do.

Jim texted him that evening and told him he was going to be away for a week, far away, and that Sebastian would be emailed a list of tasks the next morning.

By midweek Sebastian had done everything. Partly skill, partly luck, favourable weather conditions and foolish targets.

He felt at a loose end without Jim, so devoted the rest of his time to reading, and to exercise- mostly running. He liked the mindless slam of your feet into the pavement and the comfortable tug of your muscles as you worked up a hill, the thick breath and the warmth of the exercise.

However Sebastian's relationship with literature was an odd one.

Fundamentally he had no interest in other people. That was his lack of empathy, his coldness, what let him kill people and extinguish lives as easily and thoughtlessly as one puts out a light in a room. Yet in books he sought for himself or for Jim with a tireless diligence. He looked for affirmation that concepts like him and Jim might exists in gleaming literature, and not just in the gritty everyday grey world of smells and rubbish. Many people look for characters and novels in real life: Sebastian looked for himself in stories.

He didn't know why did it. He was otherwise endlessly practical, efficient, unsentimental. How can you have sentiment without empathy? Sebastian had a need to find a representation of himself in fiction just to prove that he wasn't too hard for the soft world of golden pages and typeface. Maybe. Possibly. He didn't understand himself, though it didn't matter; he never found himself, or Jim.

The novelists always made mistakes. They could capture half of them. In anything from the classics to cheap crime fiction the villain was the closest thing to Seb or Jim, but at the last minute the author would wrack their evil fiend with grief over what they did, or worse, glee and emotion over the justice they had finally found! In Sebastian's world justice was defunct. The happiness found with a good killing was mostly in the technical precision, in physical or mental prowess, nothing _emotional._ When the author did that they missed the very point: people like Jim and Sebastian can take lives because they don't give a dam. Maybe Jim found entertainment, but for the game, or the chase.

Sebastian was always disappointed, but he still read.

He wasn't totally a robot. Seb found the ingenious ways that some of the victims were murdered in interesting, even if the plots were terrible. Seb didn't care for joy or justice, but he appreciated fear in others and pain- both being emotions in himself he considered useless and irritating. The fictional villains sometimes tortured people for fun, but there was always an underlying motive. Seb now had Jim to give him one, like the list he'd been emailed, but honestly, there wasn't _really_ one. He and Jim just passed the days in anyway they found amusing. They did it for fun.

Except when Jim lost control, (tried to kill himself?) and then flew away across the globe somewhere.

Sebastian doesn't understand Jim's suicidal side, if that was what it was. He's had hints of it before, here and there, Jim throwing himself into dangerous situations with no regard for himself, but the roof incident seemed un-Jim like. Pathetic and human and odd. If Jim was going to die, surely it'd be doing something ridiculous, glamorous, not shivering, wet and off your head on a random evening. Sebastian gets bored too, he gets frustrated too, but the force of emotion needed to take your own life has always eluded him. He's never felt the need to try, even after he was dismissed, he was alone, without money while he tried to access his inheritance, and bored and tired by menial part time work.

There are always small pleasures to be had, whether it's beating someone at cards, the taste of a drink after a long time away from alcohol, or sex.

Or, reading novels and running.

Without Jim Sebastian's life is empty and quiet. He moves about his empty flat, eats, run, reads, sleeps, and does not speak. By the time Jim comes back he realises he hasn't spoken a word all week, even the till in a shop can be operated in silence nowadays.

Jim texts once, two days before he returns:

_Hope you're not too bored without me. –JM_

Sebastian texts back immediately:

_Coping. Is there anything else you want me to do? –SM_

Jim doesn't reply. Is he giving Seb the cold shoulder for seeing him so weak? It's a Jim like thing to do.

Seb hopes that when he returns, like in the stories, there will be a happy reunion with lots of sex. Banter, laughter, cruelty. Back to complete each others emptiness, in ways that they don't understand, just as all those author's don't understand them. Life copies the false-hoods in books this time though, just as Seb hoped it would.

The last two days of waiting were easy. Seb is a patient at waiting; it comes with being a sniper.

Jim is horrible and beautiful; it comes with being Jim.


End file.
